Self employed and stuff

Wednesday, May 01, 2013

At the beginning of the year I anticipated change and a third of the way through the year, my life already feels entirely different, which is largely due to all the work nonsense. What followed was me setting up as a freelance designer. It started out being hectic, but it's pace has slowed a little now.

Before I would play out a scene which you are probably all familiar with - rushing around to get to work, rushing to meet deadlines throughout the day and then rushing home to find supper hasn't cooked itself (or managed to drag it's sorry arse out of the freezer). Evenings where spent crashed out, thinking about all the housework and exercise that wasn't getting done.

Looking back I was exhausted all the time. Running on auto pilot. And now that I have more time, what do I do? I berate myself for not living in a spotless house, with meals planned a week in advance, laundry done, blah, blah. Blah. How can these things not be done when I have All. This. Time? Why do we do this to ourselves? Put ourselves under so much pressure?

I have freelance work to do, I'm covering maternity leave for Bethanie and looking after her blog, I have this blog, I'm on the committee of a local charity, do any design work they need, run their social media and help out at fundraising events (including organising a clothes swap every six weeks), I have recently started working with a local company, setting up and running a social media campaign for a Guinness World Record attempt, for the largest gathering of fairies (in aid of the afore mentioned charity). I am slowly building my own website and am learning to crochet and trying to get through a mountain of unread books. In addition to all the house stuff.

So when I say I have 'all this time', I realise that that was just an expectation I had of not being 'in work'.

I love the freedom of being able to work at anytime of the day (or night) or go food shopping mid morning, when it's not so busy and have the flexibility to come and go as I please but the problem with having no set routine is that I can become unfocused and jump from one thing to another, on the flip side I easily become engrossed in something and before I know it hours have gone by, leaving no time for anything else.A few months in and niggles surfaced. I was jittery and couldn't shake the feeling that I wasn't achieving anything. But this morning I realised that I'm in control, it's all entirely down to me. First of all I needed to give myself a break, let it go, shrug it off (an actual massive, who gives a damn, tension releasing shoulder shrug) and simply set out a bit more of a routine. I realise that so far the worst consequence of my 'failings' has been running out of bread on occasion - Mr Joy had to buy his lunch. And we've run out of milk a few times which means drinking herbal tea. And the house is a mess sometimes. Not exactly disastrous is it?So, despite the randomness of my first few months as self employed, I've decided I'm doing okay.

I can totally see how that would happen. I felt a little like that when I was unemployed - all this time and yet I didn't feel I was acheiving anything (including finding a job). Enter The Routine. Helps that I'm super anal and boring and love a routine and list. It really helped to keep me on track and focused when I needed to be.

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